


looking down from a great height

by wagamiller



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2015-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-10 00:49:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3270554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wagamiller/pseuds/wagamiller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“This new Vertigo shows you your worst fear, right?”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Yeah.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“So mine already happened, Dig,” she tells him, flatly. “Vertigo can’t hurt me.”</i>
</p><p>(post 3x09, reunion!fic)</p>
            </blockquote>





	looking down from a great height

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by the knowledge that another Vertigo ep was coming but I started it before we had any idea when Oliver would return in relation to that ep, which is why it's basically AU to anything after 3x09. I found this half finished recently and decided to finish it and post it before 3x12 gives us the actual (presumably) heart-wrenching reunion this week. The Russian comes from google, so naturally if there's any Russian speakers reading and it's horribly wrong, please tell me! Title from the dictionary definition of vertigo.
> 
> Our girl really gets put through the wringer here, because apparently I spent most of the hiatus dreaming up traumatic ways for Oliver and Felicity to reunite...

* * *

 

Sitting on the floor of a windowless room at Palmer Industries, Felicity says aloud, “Well. Crap.”

Getting stabbed with a syringe full of Vertigo is really rounding out an already shitty week.

Dig’s on his way so she sits tight and waits, trying to keep her breathing steady. Her head’s already pounding and when she looks down at her chest there’s a thin sheen of sweat breaking out across her skin. 

All she can think is, _Oliver’s going to be so mad._

When she remembers that dead men don’t get angry, she puts her head in her hands and cries for a little while.

Dig finds her like that, bursting through the door and skidding to a halt at the sight.

He drops to his knees beside her, taking her wrists gently and moving her arms down so he can see her face. There’s been a permanent pinched expression on his face for weeks but it’s gone now, replaced with a more immediate sort of strain.

“Felicity,” he speaks slowly or maybe her ears aren’t quite up to the job of hearing at the moment. “You’re ok. Everything’s gonna be ok.”

She giggles because that’s about the biggest lie she’s ever heard. Dig’s eyes flash and she makes an effort to clamp down the hysteria that’s bubbling up, even as she feels her head start to spin.

Diggle stands up, offering her his hand. She wants to stand on her own but the room seems to be tilting sideways so she lets him lift her and set her upright on her feet. All of a sudden, the wall is a lot closer than a moment ago and she staggers, realising she’s swaying right towards it. Dig grabs the top of her arm, setting her straight.

“What were you thinking?” he says, mostly to himself. An undercurrent of concern takes the edge off his annoyance. 

“Nobody expects to find a Vertigo lab in the basement, Dig,” she protests, focusing on not falling over. “I thought it’d be another dead end. I was right upstairs. Didn’t seem worth calling you.”

She knows it’s a reasonable argument and she’s pretty proud of making it in her current state, but Dig just huffs in disagreement. 

“You could have been killed,” he says tightly. He doesn’t add the word, “too,” but she hears it all the same and her stomach drops in a way that’s got nothing to do with the drugs. 

Lately, even with Roy and Laurel and sometimes Ted, it feels a lot like it’s just the two of them. She can see the panic, barely concealed behind the irritation in his eyes, and she recognises it as the same fear that consumes her when he goes out at night. The fear of being the last one left behind.

“I’m sorry, John,” she says, in a tiny voice. 

Diggle softens immediately at her use of his first name. He gives her a tight lipped smile, his hand still hovering over her arm. “S’ok.”

Shaking off the heavy moment, he looks around the room, taking in the apparatus around them for the first time. “This where he’s cooking it up y’think?”

“Looks like it.” She nods, which is a really terrible idea because when her head stops moving, it feels a lot like the room still is. 

“You get a good look at the guy that attacked you?”

“Not really.” She shakes her head which, as it turns out, is equally as bad an idea as nodding. “Tall. Dark hair. Average height. But he wasn’t surprised to see me,” she adds, remembering the way he’d just been standing there, arms folded, when she opened the door. “And the Vertigo wasn’t an accident. He said–” She shudders, remembering the manic fervour in his voice. “He said it was a gift for me ... f-from the Count.”

Dig makes a noise somewhere between a sigh and a growl, snapping his jaw closed so quickly it’s almost audible. 

“We’ll find him, Dig,” she promises. “Nobody just walks in here and borrows a room for their drug den. He has to be an employee.”

“Good,” Diggle says grimly. “When we find him - he’ll lead us to the Count.”

The way he says it, she knows he’s not planning on giving him a choice. She’d almost feel sorry for the guy, if he hadn’t hit her with an unknown quantity of an unknown drug, that is.

“Lance has some guys a couple of minutes out,” Diggle tells her, offering his arm. “He’ll let us know what he finds in here. We’d better get you to the hospital.”

“What? No.” She shakes her head again or maybe not, maybe the room’s just spinning and she’s standing still. She blinks, really not sure which. 

“You need a Doctor,” Diggle insists, frowning down at her with a look that’s so close to Oliver that her breath catches.

“I’ll be fine,” she says, her shaking voice letting her down. “Take me to the Foundry. We can monitor me there until it wears off.”

Dig looks unconvinced so she tries her level best not to sway and fixes him with her most determined look. 

“Please, Dig. I can help catch this guy. I want to.”

“You can’t work. We don’t know what this will do to you–”

“It’ll be fine,” she says, waving a hand dismissively. It swims in front of her, one hand, then three, then lots and lots and lots. She lowers it out of her field of vision, blinking back to Diggle’s face. Then she marshals the argument she knows he won’t be able to deny.

“This new Vertigo shows you your worst fear, right?” 

“Yeah.”

“So mine already happened, Dig,” she tells him, flatly. “Vertigo can’t hurt me.”

The look that crosses Diggle’s face makes her want to slide back down the wall and cry some more. 

“Felicity,” he says her name, but nothing more.

“Please. The Foundry.” She sighs. “Please.”

He looks at her for a minute, a muscle jumping in his jaw, before finally nodding. “Ok.”

Managing a smile, she dips her head in thanks and lets him lead her out. 

When the elevator doors open on the lobby, she can’t hold it in anymore. “Hey, Diggle?”

“Hmm?”

“You’re not actually bleeding from a head wound, are you?”

His face clouds over immediately. “No, Felicity.” 

Blood is steadily streaming from a nasty gash on his forehead, except it’s not, it’s really not, and if she keeps telling herself that then maybe she can get through the rest of the day.

“Thought so,” she says, deliberately casual. “Guess I have a few more fears, huh?”

“Hospital,” Diggle grinds out.

“Foundry,” she counters, stepping out into the lobby and trusting that he is right behind her in case she falls.

(She does.

He is.)

 

* * *

 

“You sure you’re ok?” Roy asks, watching her warily. 

For the umpteenth time since she arrived back at the Foundry, Felicity issues the same lie. “Yes.”

Roy looks like he wants to argue, but doesn’t. 

That happens a lot lately. With all of them. Wanting to argue, but not. 

“Are you seeing things?” he asks, concern furrowing his brow.

He’s bleeding from the chest, a nasty looking wound that is turning his red hoodie an entirely different shade of red. 

“Nope,” Felicity lies, again.

Roy folds his arms but when he opens his mouth to argue, Felicity interjects. 

“Look, I’ve been better,” she says, rolling her eyes at her own understatement. “Obviously. But I want to work.” She fixes Roy with a stare that she hopes is as steady as she’s intending. “Lance sent me some of the evidence they picked up at Palmer Industries. Let me find this guy, ok?”

Roy looks at her for a really long time and it’s weird because his lips aren’t moving but all the same she can hear his voice saying, _it’s your fault_ , over and over again. Because apparently auditory hallucinations are a thing too, now. Great. 

She runs a hand under her glasses, rubbing her eyes. They’re wet, although she doesn’t remember when she actually started crying.

“Find the bastard,” Roy says eventually, fixing her with a look of such concern that it’s enough, for a minute, to make her stop seeing the blood that isn’t really there.

“Right,” she mutters, turning her attention back to her monitors. “Find him. Sure. No problem.”

It’s been embarrassing really, how easily the new Count has evaded them after escaping police custody. Six people dead in five days, his new strain of Vertigo flooding back onto the streets, and Felicity couldn’t even find a lead _before_ she was dealing with a narcotic in her bloodstream.

She’d kept trying, every night, because she didn’t know how to do anything else. And whenever they’d come back empty handed, she’d bitten her lip and hidden her face behind her monitors because she didn’t want to be the one to say it. _Oliver would have stopped him by now._

 

* * *

 

Since they don’t know the dose, or really anything at all about the drug, they don’t have a clue how long the Vertigo will take to metabolise out of her system. Felicity hopes it’s really fucking soon.

Roy and Diggle stay to keep an eye on her and do a really bad job of pretending that’s not what they’re doing, but she doesn’t call them on it.

If they keep sparring on the mats in the corner, if she can hear them sweating and grunting, _alive_ , then she can almost ignore that they’re also lying out on the table in front of her monitors, cold and dead and staring at her. The body changes every now and again, Roy to Dig to Laurel to Sara, three arrows in her chest and blood in her blonde wig.

She waits for it to change to Oliver, but it never does.

And God, she really hates herself for almost wishing it would, just so she could see him again.

When the computer dings an alert that one of her searches has turned up something, she almost doesn’t notice it. She’s got her fingers in her ears, a pointless attempt to drown out calls for help that are only in her head anyway. It’s Thea except it’s not, except it really, really, sounds like it is. She’s bleeding out on the table, screaming and crying and asking for Oliver and Felicity can’t help her. Can’t help any of them.

Dig’s hands on her wrists jolt her back to reality, or at least closer to it. She lets him pull her hands away from her face, trying to focus on just what’s real - the concern in his eyes and the strain in his jaw. 

“Hey, hey, hey,” he says, voice slow and soothing. “Whatever it is, it’s not real.”

“It feels real,” she whispers, and her voice is as hoarse as if she’s been screaming.

She looks at Dig, at the way his eyes are blown wide in fear, and wonders if maybe she has been.

He doesn’t ask her what she’s seeing and God, she really loves him for that. When he tugs on her elbow, pulling her up from her chair and into a hug, she focuses on the steady thrum of his heartbeat under her ear. It feels like his blood is soaking into her shirt but it’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real and she keeps saying it in her head until suddenly she’s saying it out loud and Diggle’s saying it too, quiet and soothing into her ear.

The computer pings again and she pulls back from him, remembering what had first caught her attention. He releases her, eyeing the screen over her shoulder as she spins in her chair back round and calls up the window she needs.

“Ha! Got him,” she crows, pulling up the staff photo she wants and dismissing the other possibilities with a click of her mouse.

“He looks so normal,” Roy says, coming up behind her to look.

“He probably was, once,” Felicity allows. “Until the Vertigo.”

She grabs a pencil, noting down an address. When she looks down, her writing’s an almost unrecognisable scribble. A drop of blood falls onto the paper and she looks up, seeing another fall from Roy’s lips. When she looks back down, the paper is clear. She shakes her head, as if that might dislodge the images that are taking root in her mind so deep that she already knows what she’s going to see the next time she closes her eyes to sleep. At least it’ll be a break from Oliver, she thinks, wondering dimly whether she’s happy or sad about that.

“That his home address?” Dig asks, reaching over a bloody hand to take the paper.

“I’ll go,” Roy volunteers.

“Both of you go,” Felicity insists, ignoring the way they both recoil at the idea of leaving her alone. “I’ll be fine,” she promises, though she’s rarely felt further from it in her life. “This guy is dangerous. You need backup, Roy. I’ll stay on comms the whole time, I promise.”

Diggle comes and looms over her, exactly the way Oliver used to. She bites her lip until it bleeds just so she doesn’t cry. Tears don’t seem a good idea when she’s trying to win an argument. 

He looks down at her for a long time, not saying anything. The silent conversation lasts about a minute and when Diggle lets out a long breath and steps back, she knows she’s won.

And she’s fine, really she is, for at least ten minutes after they leave.

That’s when the door clicks open and she hears heavy steps tread down the stairs, cautious and slow.

A voice calls hello, a voice that’s impossible, that cannot be here, cannot be real.

“No,” she breathes, leaving her chair and and turning to walk towards the sound. Towards him.

She starts to cry at the exact moment he starts to smile.

“Not him,” she whispers, as if the drug could hear her, could grant her this favour. “Please, anything but him.”

He cocks his head to the side, questioning. Unsure. 

“Felicity?” he says her name gently, carefully.

When she faints, it feels a lot like he catches her.

Her last thought is that it’s impossible. 

Ghosts can’t hold on so tight.

 

* * *

 

 

She comes around with a start, lying down on the cot bed in the corner. In the permanent half-light of the Foundry, there’s no way to be sure how much time has passed. 

She mumbles out a curse, sitting up and swinging her legs round to sit on the edge of the bed. Her head swims as soon as she moves and she blinks blearily around, trying to decide if the pounding in her head is the Vertigo or just it’s after-effects.

She holds her head gingerly, dimly registering that someone’s removed her glasses. The familiar shapes of her computers are vague grey blurs in the middle distance, and when Diggle unfolds himself from a chair and starts towards her, she can make out his bulk, but not his face.

When he steps close enough, his face swims into view, concerned and wary and ... something else, something she can’t quite place. Stunned, maybe.

“Hey,” he says, carefully. “You scared us, there.”

“Sorry,” she mumbles, running a hand through her loose hair, catching on some tangles. “I saw–” She trails off, feeling herself start to shake because it’s just occurred to her that Diggle said _us_. 

“Oliver,” she finishes, just as he moves out from behind Diggle and steps into view. 

Even without her glasses, she’d know him anywhere.

Diggle grabs Oliver’s wrist in warning but the look Oliver flashes him is so dangerous, so wild, that Dig lets go and throws his arms up in surrender, stepping aside.

She watches, not blinking, as Oliver takes three cautious steps towards her.

“Felicity?” 

And god, his voice is exactly right. All those nights last week when she kept herself awake because she didn’t think she could remember the sound of his voice, they were all for nothing. Hours of Youtube footage, Oliver giving a dozen boring press conferences, even a couple of shaky phone cameras of The Arrow in action, but none of them had brought the voice she was looking for. Steady, calm, a rumble of pure affection. She’d thought she’d forgotten it, but it must be in there somewhere, because the Vertigo is recreating it exactly.

“No,” she murmurs, hands covering her head as if that could block the sound out. “Not him. Not this. Please.”

“Felicity.” The smile slides off his face and he closes the distance between them in no time, dropping to a crouch in front of her.

This close, she can make out every single line of his familiar face, perfectly re-created by the Vertigo and oh, it’s just not _fair_. If she gets to see him again, why does it have to be like this? He looks terrified, wild panic in his eyes, a deep furrow in his brow. She screws her eyes closed tight before the Vertigo can supply something even worse. Empty eyes and blood in his mouth, bruises on his perfect, unmarked face.

“Not again,” she bites the words out, a prayer or a plea, but nobody’s listening today. “Please. Not again.”

She feels herself start to rock forward, losing control. Even with her eyes shut and her hands clamped down tight over her ears, she can still _feel_ him in front of her.

“Felicity, look at me.” Oliver’s hands land on her wrists and her brain screams, _not real, not real, not real_ , but she can feel his fingers all the same, warm and calloused and holding her tight enough to hurt. 

“Go away,” she begs, tears choking out her voice. “You’re dead. _Go away_.”

His strong arms pry her hands from her face but she shakes her head, not opening her eyes. Dig’s saying something, but she can’t make out the words, can’t register anything but the feel of Oliver’s hands on her skin. 

“I’m real,” he whispers, and she reels back in shock when his forehead lands against hers for a moment. His voice is a huff of breath against her lips, terrified and desperate. “Felicity, c'mon, please.”

“I can’t–”

He’s still holding her wrists in his hands, away from her ears so she can’t block out the order he’s repeating over and over. “Look at me, Felicity. _Please_.”

Choking back a sob, she gives in and opens her eyes.

Oliver’s face swims into view, blurry beyond the tears in her eyes. She blinks furiously, clearing her vision until she can see him clearly and she marvels again, just for a second, at the perfection of the image. That her brain has somehow stored away all this detail, the cut of his jaw, the lines on his forehead, the exact shade of his blue eyes. Oh, she must have really loved him.

Oliver gasps out a breath of relief and lets go of her wrists, his hands landing on her cheeks.

There’s no blood on his face, nothing in his eyes but tears and terror. She waits, a heartbeat’s pause, for the Vertigo to do it’s worse.

“See?” he says carefully, thumbs wiping away her tears. “I’m here. I’m alive.” 

She shakes her head, a tiny jerking motion, still waiting for the drug to supply some new terror.

“You’re not real,” she says, voice rising dangerously because the line between real and imagined is blurring away and this is insanity, right here, a gaping hole she can feel herself falling into. And the thing that scares her the most is that right now, if looking at him is insanity and losing him is reality, she knows which one she’ll choose.

“Knock me out,” she begs, while she still has the sense to ask, her eyes frantically skipping from Oliver to Dig, who is hovering just next to him, eyes wide. She starts to shake again, a tremble that starts in her chest and runs all over, rattling her down to her bones. “Please! Right now! Until the Vertigo’s gone.”

Oliver tightens his hands on her jaw, trying to ground her. “Felicity–”

Her head spins like she’s running as fast as Barry, Central City to Starling in no time flat, everything blurring into nonsense except the sight of Oliver, right in front of her. She screws her eyes up, but she can still see him, the image perfectly preserved against the black behind her eyes.

The only thing left to do is scream.

When she digs her nails into her cheeks, she hears him echo her order, his voice shaking. “Sedate her! John, now!”

The bite of the needle is sharp and cold and she lets herself go, head falling forwards to her chest. Gentle hands manoeuvre her head down onto the thin pillow, before lifting her feet up and onto the bed.

Right before she drifts under, she realises he won’t be there when she wakes up.

And yes he’s not here now, but she’s a fucking genius after all so her hallucinations are almost perfect. Every intonation of his voice, every emotion his eyes have ever held, all the wonderful imperfections that make up the man she loves.

And after this, she’s _never_ going to see him again.

With a supreme effort, she opens her eyes.

Tears swim in front of her eyes, blurring her vision and that’s just unforgivable, not seeing him clearly right now is the cruellest thing in the world. She makes out just enough to know that he’s crying, his blue eyes over-bright in his face and she registers, with a dull punch of shock, that the blood she’s been waiting for never did appear on his face. 

She opens her mouth and mutters a single “oh,” of surprise, before the sedative takes effect and she slips away.

 

* * *

 

When she comes round the second time, it’s a lot harder to open her eyes. She blinks slowly, her eyelids heavy. When she swings her legs round and down, her head throbs.

“Déjà vu,” she grumbles, rubbing her sore eyes.

This time her glasses are folded up within reach, beside a glass of water on the table next to her. She reaches a shaking arm for them and sighs in relief, because slipping them on is like solving a puzzle, the blurry pieces of the room reordering themselves into sense. The water cools her raw throat and she wonders, vaguely, just how loud she screamed before Diggle put her under.

With a jolt of shock, she remembers why she’d asked him to and looks around wildly, for Oliver.

Her head and her heart ache at the same moment, a dull throb of pain as she takes in the Foundry and the one solitary man sitting in her chair watching the monitors. Not quite the man she was hoping to see, but a friendly face nonetheless.

“Diggle,” she calls, voice hoarse. 

“Felicity.” He jumps up and hurries over. “You’re up.”

“Yeah,” she says, trying to swallow down the lump in her throat. It’s so stupid, but for a second there she’d actually thought it might have been real. God, she really hates Vertigo.

“How’re you feeling?” Diggle says, dropping into a crouch in front of her.

“Like I’ve got a migraine and a hangover at once,” she says, blowing out a breath. “Wow, people buy this stuff voluntarily?”

Diggle huffs a humourless laugh. “Hopefully not after tonight.” 

“You let Roy go after him alone?” She stands up suddenly which, as it happens, is a big mistake. She overbalances and Dig stands up to grab her arm, steadying her before she stumbles.

“What were you thinking?” she asks, shaking him off and wobbling over to her monitors where a schematic of a warehouse is taking up most of the screens.

“He’s not alone,” Dig says in a strange voice, following closely behind her.

“What d’you mean?” she says sharply, dropping into her chair and spinning to face him. 

Beyond him, the mannequin that holds Oliver’s hood is empty, shining silver under the fluorescents and fuck, it’s a good job she’s sitting down because she’s pretty sure her legs have just given out.

Diggle breathes out a shaky breath, running a nervous hand over his face. “He didn’t want to leave you, but Roy ran into some trouble,” he says, distractedly, “and we were sure you wouldn't come round until he was back–”

“Until _who_ was back?” she prompts, clenching her fists and not believing what might be coming but god, wanting to.

“Oliver’s alive, Felicity,” Dig says, quietly. “That was really him, before.”

“Oh,” she chokes out the word, running a hand through her hair. Her heart sinks, down, down, down, right to her feet. “I’ve still got Vertigo in my system, right?” she says dully, sighing. “This isn’t real.”

“Look at your blood results,” he adds, nodding a head to her left-hand monitor. “I ran a sample about ten minutes ago.”

Spinning round, she calls up the small window and reads the result once, twice, three times. Then she looks down, taking in the small cotton bud taped in the crook of her elbow. When she rips it off, there’s a tiny scratch underneath, a pinprick of blood left behind by the needle.

She stares at it for a long time.

Evidence.

Proof.

Her rational mind reels, trying to find a different explanation.

“Dig,” she calls his name desperately, even though he’s right beside her. He drops to his knees, grabbing her arm like he did once before, on a very different day. “What’s going on?”

“It’s alright, Felicity,” he says, his voice a quiet rumble of concern. “Just breathe.”

She hadn’t really realised she wasn’t.

“H-he’s really alive?” 

“Look,” Diggle says, tugging her chair round to face the monitors.

A tiny blinking cursor flashes, the tracker in his boot, transmitting his location beside Roy in the warehouse.

“They’ve found the Count,” Dig says, tapping the bluetooth in his ear. “Cornered him just before you woke up.”

She watches the light blink steadily, reaching up a trembling hand towards the tiny line of text that reads _Arrow._

It moves, just as her finger lands on it and she jumps, gasping a quick intake of breath. 

She doesn’t know why that does it, why a little blinking light on her computer is what finally convinces her but as she watches the cursor move, the tracker that _she_ set up, on the system _she_ installed, she believes it at last.

“He’s alive.” 

This time it’s not a question.

She leans back in her chair, breathing in. Her lungs fill like she hasn’t taken a proper breath since he walked out the door all those days ago. When she breathes out, her breath catches on a sob. 

“Can I?” she gestures mutely to the comm link, unable to quite find the words to explain the need to hear his voice again.

“Of course,” Diggle says, handing it to her immediately.

She takes it, fumbling her nervous hands as she tries to put it in her ear. 

Static crackles and then there’s his voice, a rumble right in her ear, murmuring strategy to Roy. 

And she could laugh, if she wasn’t crying, because the closest comparison for what she’s feeling right now is probably _vertigo_.

Whirling. Loss of balance. Standing on a tall ledge, looking down.

She closes her eyes, screwing them up on the tears there, hands tightening on the arms of her chair. Roy and Oliver about to attack which is the only thing in the world that stops her from saying something into his channel, a _hello_  or a _where the hell have you been?_ She's really not sure which.

It takes maybe three minutes to subdue the Count and his men and she listens to every excruciating second of it. Now that she knows he’s alive, breathing and real, the fragility of it all is a million times worse. Every thud could be a broken bone, another cracked rib, another bruise on that ridiculously handsome face she knows so well.

This is how she could go mad, she realises, sitting in this chair and thinking of all the ways he could fall to pieces before she gets him home and in her arms. 

Except.

Except, except, except.

What did she say, all that time ago, when he was broken and she was the one he looked to?

_I believe in you._

So she closes her eyes and recites all the people he’s beaten, one by one, name after name. 

By the time she’s done, the Count is secured for SCPD’s Finest to collect and Oliver is speaking into the channel again.

“All done here, Diggle,” he says, barely out of breath. “Is Felicity alright?”

Taking a deep breath, she takes the mute off her end. Her breath stutters a little because god, she never thought she’d get to say his name again and expect a reply.

“Oliver?”

He breathes in sharply, a hiss over the comm.

“Felicity.”

Her name falls from his lips carefully, worry laced with something else, a note of something that might be longing.

“Come home,” she says simply, a line she’s delivered a thousand times. It’s never quite meant this much before. “Right now, please.”

 

* * *

 

 

It takes Oliver twenty-seven minutes to get back to the Foundry.

Twenty-seven minutes that Felicity spends mostly in the bathroom, quietly breaking down. 

The Vertigo’s gone but it’s after effects are a real doozy. Her head pounds, a constant throbbing pulse that makes everything sluggish and slow, like swimming with all your clothes on. She did that once, diving to the bottom of the school pool to pick up a brick as if doing that meant she could do the same for a drowning man or something.

The moment she closes the bathroom door, she reels back at the face that stares back out of the mirror. Her skin is too pale, the skin under her eyes heavy and dark, like two bruises are blossoming under there. There’s a thin scratch down the side of one cheek that she did to herself. Her stomach turns a little at the memory. She washes it out carefully, smoothing over the broken skin with some of the antiseptic cream that’s lying around on the sink.

Her hair’s a bird’s nest so she drags a brush through it, trying to coax it back into some semblance of order. Then she laughs until she cries so hard that Diggle knocks on the door, because Oliver’s seen her falling to pieces tonight already so what does it even matter if there are knots in her hair?

“I’m alright, Dig,” she mumbles through the door, trying to inject a bit of her usual energy into her voice. “Give me a minute, ok?”

Diggle grumbles an unhappy sound but his footsteps recede, granting her privacy.

Turning back to the mirror, she scrapes her hair up and into a ponytail. It’s messy and there’s a few stray strands falling around her face but it’s close enough to normal that the face that stares back at her looks a little less like a stranger.

Straightening her glasses, she pinches her cheeks to try and inject some colour back in and heads back into the Foundry, shoulders back, head high. 

Dig holds out some of his magic painkillers but she pushes his hand away, remembering the weightless feeling from the last time, how she’d floated out of the Foundry and woke up the next morning with her stitches sore and no god damn clue who had driven her home.

Right now everything feels _real_ and god, she needs that. The lights are too bright, the floor solid and cold beneath her bare feet and actually, where the hell are her shoes? She finds them lined up neatly under the cot in the corner and wonders, with a swoop in her stomach, if Oliver placed them there. 

Before he put his Hood on and walked out the door and into danger. Again.

Elation swings back round to anger, laced with a shiver of fear.

It’s exhausting.

She retrieves her shoes and slips them back on, standing a little taller and straighter. When she turns around, Dig’s watching her with something like pride in his eyes.

Trying hard not to stumble, she makes her way over to her chair before dropping into it with a sigh of relief. 

Heels, apparently, are not a good idea when you’re recovering from a Vertigo overdose.

She slips them off under the table and hopes Dig doesn’t notice.

The tracker in Oliver’s boot is still active, transmitting a steady signal that places him two blocks from the Foundry. She props her elbows on the table and holds her chin up on her hands, watching his progress and not blinking until her eyes burn.

Dig comes up behind her and watches in silence, stepping away towards the foot of the stairs when the GPS indicates that Oliver’s right outside.

The tracker still pulses, steady as a beating heart and Felicity just keeps watching it.

The door latch releases and her heart stutters at the sound of footsteps on the stairs, but still she stares at her screens.

“Man, you’ve got nine lives,” Dig says from over by the stairs and though she’s not looking, she can imagine him holding his hand out to Oliver, can practically see the smile that’ll be playing on his lips right now.

“Just one, actually,” Oliver says quietly, “and it’s time I started living it.”

She swallows hard over the lump in her throat because there’s a smile in his voice and she knows, without glancing over, that he’s looking at her.

Dig’s footsteps recede up the stairs, leaving them alone.

She should turn around, she knows, but she can’t make herself move. Everything in her field of vision has narrowed to the cursor on her screen even though the living, breathing reality is not ten feet away.

“Felicity?” His voice is cautious, his steps sounding slow and careful across the floor.

She shakes her head, tears swimming behind her eyes until she can’t even see the indicator on her screen anymore, just a blur of data in front of her. She runs a hand under her glasses, knocking them off and dropping them onto the table so she can pinch the bridge of her nose and try, even if it’s futile, to get herself back under control.

His hand lands lightly on her shoulder and the very second she feels it, the tears behind her eyes spill over.

“Hey, hey,” he says, leaning over, trying to make her look at him. “It’s over, you’re alright. I’m here.”

She runs a hand under her glasses, chasing the tears away. “You’re really here?” It’s half a question and half a statement, her voice thin and strained.

“Yes,” he says simply, giving her shoulder a squeeze.

She spins her chair round so fast she almost knocks into him. When she stands up, her head swims and she stumbles but it’s ok because if she’s falling it’s only into his arms.

Before she knows it there are strong arms holding her up and cool leather under her cheek and oh, he really is  _home._

She winds her arms around him, breathing him in, crying and shaking and thoroughly embarrassing herself but not caring, not one little bit.

He buries his head in her hair and she feels him inhale deeply, a shaky breath that expands his chest and her with it. He doesn’t quite fill his lungs though and she doesn’t miss the tremor that runs through him or the little intake of breath that says he’s in pain.

“Are you alright?”

They both say it at the same time and Felicity huffs out a laugh through her tears.

She pulls back a little, looking up at him and forgetting for a minute about anything but the fact that he’s standing right in front of her. She traces the lines of his face, leaving her hands on his cheeks, fingers curled under his jaw. 

“You’re hurt,” she says, remembering. 

“I’m recovering,” he says evasively and her stomach drops because whatever it is, it isn’t the Count, isn’t tonight. It’s Ra’s al Ghul. 

“Let me see,” she says, her voice as stern as she can make it.

Oliver steps back from her, shedding his jacket carefully and it’s pathetic really, that he thinks he’s hiding the twinges of pain from her. 

“Your poker face is terrible,” she says dully as he pulls his t-shirt over his head, wincing.

Underneath is a mess of bandages, wound thick and tight around his chest. 

She breathes in sharply, anger spiking from nowhere. “God, Oliver–”

“It’s ok,” he says tightly, hand half raised towards her.

“It is not ok,” she bites out, enunciating every syllable. A wounded look crosses his face as she steps away from his touch. “What were you thinking? The Count could have killed you–”

“I had no choice,” he says, maddeningly reasonable. “Roy would have died, Felicity. And The Count ... _he hurt you_. I didn’t want to leave you but–”

“It’s not about that,” she says, letting out a frustrated shout and throwing up her hands. “It’s about you running off to die and not coming home for weeks. _Weeks_ , Oliver! And now you're back and you _still_  don't care enough about your own life–”

“I do,” he interrupts, crossing the distance between them and towering over her, eyes suddenly dark. “I care, Felicity.”

“Well, you don’t always act like it,” she accuses, in a broken voice. 

“I know.” He lets out a breath, his shoulders dropping, all the fight going out of him. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” she says, “be _better_.”

“I will.”

He looks at her for a long time and then says the one thing he never says, not unless he really, really means it. 

“I promise.”

He looks so earnest. There's a tiny little frown-line etched between his eyebrows and she thinks, fleetingly, that she’d quite like to kiss it away. She knows then, that she’s going to forgive him, in the end. His hand closes over her elbow and she lets out a long breath, closing her eyes for a second at the contact.

“I’m so tired,” she says, voice thin, “but we are not done talking about this. And there _will_ be more yelling.”

“Ok,” he agrees, half a smile crossing his face. 

“I think I’m just ... going to need some time." 

Oliver nods, taking a step back.

“Woah,” she objects, following him. “I said time, not space.”

She wraps her arms around his waist, tucking her head into his side and holding him carefully, lightly enough not to hurt.

He relaxes under her and when he says, “Alright,” she can hear the smile that she can’t see.

His bare skin is warm beneath her cheek. She stutters out a breath because this is the closest they’ve ever been and she’s just realised that it’s still not close enough.

If hearing his voice again was like vertigo, then holding him like this is stepping off that tall ledge, only to find that she can fly.

“How’s your head?” he asks, pulling away slightly to peer down at her, concern clouding his face. He lifts a hand and carefully traces the path of the cut down her cheek, his eyes impossibly sad.

She covers his hand with her own, pressing her palm against her cheek and humming in appreciation, relaxing into his touch.

“It feels like there’s a baseball rolling around in here.”

He winces in sympathy.

“But I’m not seeing things anymore,” she goes on, shrugging. “So that’s something, right?”

Oliver lets out a little laugh, exasperation and affection intermingled and that sound, so desperately familiar, makes her stomach drop.

“You’re incredible, you know,” he says, shaking his head.

He tilts his head to the side like he’s considering something. Before she has the chance to ask him what it is, he’s leaning in, his hand closing around her elbow, tugging her gently towards him.

All it takes is for her to breathe in and then she’s kissing him.

Oliver dips his whole frame, leaning into the kiss and it’s so much better than the first time because her heart isn’t sinking and his hands aren’t trembling and neither of them is going to walk away this time. 

His arms wind around her, pulling her into the solid plane of his chest and all she feels is warm, all over, right down to her bare feet on the concrete floor. She moves carefully, trying to place her hands somewhere that won’t hurt him and he must know it because he pulls away slightly.

“It’s ok,” he says, softly. “You won’t hurt me.”

“Wait,” she says, as a horrible thought suddenly pierces the pleasant fog in her aching head. “This is definitely real, isn’t it?” She lands her palms flat on his chest and looks up at him, suddenly afraid of what she’ll see there. There’s no blood on his face, but god, her head still hurts and she wants this so much, she has to be sure. “Please tell me this is real.”

Oliver’s jaw trembles, ever so slightly. “It’s real.”

“T-tell me something only Oliver would know,” she blurts out, looking at him wildly. “Something I can’t be imagining.”

He leans in, so close that his voice is a warm huff of breath against her lips

“Я люблю тебя,” he murmurs, voice low.

“I don’t speak Russian,” she says, in a shaking voice.

“Exactly,” he says, somehow even closer. “But I do.”

“What does it mean?” 

He smiles, leaning down to brush his lips against hers softly.

“It means I love you, Felicity,” he says simply, when he pulls away.

“Oh,” she says, because there’s nothing else in her throat but tears.

She looks up at him and god, she really should have known before, that it was never the Vertigo. Even her brain, brilliant as it is, could never have recreated the soul behind his bright blue eyes.

“I can say it in Chinese too, if you like,” he says, biting back a smile.

“I can only do English,” she manages to say, reaching for his hand and locking their fingers together. “Will that do?”

Oliver’s eyes widen slightly and she smiles. Her head hurts and he’s injured and there's a million things to talk about but just for right now, none of it matters. 

“I love you, Oliver,” she says, looking up at him so she can see the exact moment the words register. His eyes soften and his lip trembles and god, she could fall in love with him all over again just for the way he’s looking at her right now.

He breathes out a sigh that might be her name. Then he’s kissing her again and all she can think is _real, real, real._  

Kissing him is the most real thing in the entire world. 

So she doesn’t stop, just wraps her arms carefully around his injured side and resolves never to let him go again.

 

 


End file.
